


The Great Pretender

by tornyourdress



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-24
Updated: 2007-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24429553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornyourdress/pseuds/tornyourdress
Summary: She's sick of pretending, and yet she's still doing it, night after night.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Miles O'Brien, Keiko O'Brien/Miles O'Brien
Kudos: 5





	The Great Pretender

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](https://nothing-hip.livejournal.com/profile)[**nothing_hip**](https://nothing-hip.livejournal.com/) (challenge: 'Second Chances').

  
Underneath the covers, she deliberately stretches out diagonally. She turns her face away from the door, and shifts her body so that her feet almost reach the opposite corner of the bed.

Face away from the door so that he won’t see that she’s waiting for him. Taking up as much space as possible in the bed so that there is no obvious gaping void waiting to be filled.

She is at her most comfortable curled up into herself, legs drawn in close and folded at the knees, one arm underneath her head as she sleeps and the other resting on her stomach. This sprawling posture is an act.

No wife should have to pretend in sleep. She pretends all day. She pretends she is adjusting to life on this wretched space station where everyone sees her, for the first time in her life, as _the chief’s wife_ or _the schoolteacher_ instead of _Keiko O’Brien, botanist, scientist, person in her own right_. She pretends she is sympathetic towards the Bajoran insistence on viewing the wormhole aliens as religious figures, and their adopting of a Starfleet officer as their emissary. She pretends that everything is all right.

She pretends to indulge her husband’s friendship with the station’s doctor, pretends to like Julian, pretends to understand that boys will be boys and have their games in the bar and their adventures on the holodeck.

She pretends to believe her husband when he is _working late_ or when he _just lost track of time_.

And when he creeps in, sleepy and satiated, she pretends to have comfortably accommodated his absence in their bed. To have not missed him.  
  



End file.
